How much Max Reger (1873 - 1916) does one need?
Enough to rid oneself of the stereotypes, not so much as to reinforce
them. This catch-all box of re-released Reger by Brilliant does a very
fine job of striking that balance.

About those stereotypes of Reger as a composer more appreciated than
listened-to, a “master of thick textures, heavy counterpoint,
and interminable fugues”… here is the only answer you need
to pass Stereotyping Reger 101:“Too much counterpoint
(=too conservative) for modernists, too much chromaticism and dissonance
for Romantics.”

Sitting between two chairs, as his music did, his popularity plummeted
among all but ardent organ lovers as a composer of densely chromatic,
contrapuntal music; dour … a Brahms minus the melodies …
and serious with a capital “S”. To musicians meanwhile Reger
is widely known as the author of the pithiest response to a critic ever
penned: “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have
your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me!” The
German musicologist Carl Dahlhaus, with a wink and a poke, wrote in
his lexicon that “Reger’s music, as opposed to that of Mahler
or Berg, leaves listeners who didn’t get much or any of it, with
the distinct and unsettling feeling that they didn’t get it.”

It might be true - beyond the image (which seems much more pronounced
than actual familiarity with his work) - that a little Reger goes a
long way, which in turn might explain that there are not many box sets
with Reger’s music. A complete chamber music set was brought from
LPs unto 23 CDs and circulated in Germany for a while, but never stormed
the charts. MDG abandoned a similar project, but did bundle all the
organ works on 12 CDs with Rosalinde Haas; a set I remember sneaking
concentric circles around when I was a student and had discovered it
at the local Tower Records (RIP)
- until I pounced on it when it had finally, disillusioned by lack of
interest, emigrated into the bargain-bin. Markus Becker recorded the
complete piano works for Thorofon; that might not have been the reason
the outfit went under, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.

Well, here is Brilliant Classics’ contribution to this perilous
field of Reger box-sets … not quite a cube at 11 CDs in sleeves
in a snug cardboard wallet, but sizeable and notable. The bulk is made
up of the Berlin Classics box of the orchestral works, and this is good
news, because it contains splendid music in excellent, sympathetic performances.
Rob
Barnett and Jonathan
Woolf have reviewed it for MusicWeb International, and their searching,
positive-if-noncommittal reviews will give you an idea of the music,
throwing around - as one is naturally prone to, when describing Reger’s
output - all the other composers’ names that his music could be
said to evoke: Elgar (to English ears at least), Sibelius (not all that
much), Wagner, certainly Strauss, and definitely Brahms … I would
add “Joseph Marx”, but if you know the latter’s music,
you’re familiar enough with Reger not to need the crutch of imperfect
analogy.

The performances are played by a veritable Who’s Who in GDR music-making.
This makes sense since the recordings were produced for the state-controlled
monopolistic music publisher. The Dresden orchestras, the RSO Berlin,
the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Radio
Symphony Orchestra Leipzig (now the MDR SO) participate under the leadership
of Heinz Bongartz (only the Böcklin-Suite op.128 sounds
awfully tame in his hands), Heinz Rögner, Otmar Suitner, Franz
Konwitschny, Günther Herbig, and guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt.
They produce what Rob Barnett rightly calls “heartfelt music-making
across these warm-hearted and sometimes languorous works”…
and if anything, I suspect he might underestimate just how good most
of these performances really are. Apart from the obvious lack of competition,
this is not a set of compromises, but a set of standard-setters …
even if those are standards that might be surpassed in a few instances,
depending on one’s taste and predilections.

The liner notes, retained and amended from the Berlin Classics release
- unusual for Brilliant, they laudably include the texts and organ registrations
- make a good case that all of Reger’s orchestral works are in
some way the product of his fruitless aim at the grand symphony. Reger
never found his way to the symphony, but he hit upon many a fine alternative
and compromise along the way, with his neo-classical, luscious, usually
lengthy but not always protracted works. Especially the Variation sets
(Mozart, Hiller, Beethoven) are easy on the ears and make for a good
introduction to orchestral Reger.

The Violin Concerto has had a few notable outings just recently - with
Ulf Wallin and Ulf Schirmer (on CPO, with unbeatable sonics) and with
Benjamin Schmid and Hannu Lintu (on Ondine). Perhaps this signals a
renaissance of the Reger Concerto and we’ll soon hear the hour-long
concerto in concert halls around this world? In any case, both new recordings
are contestants for a hypothetical crown in the repertoire, but they
would have to fight it out with Manfred Scherzer, Herbert Blomstedt
and the Dresden Staatskapelle (included on this set) which sets a standard
- especially in spiritedness and orchestral brawn - that isn’t
easily surpassed. That said, I enjoy Wallin’s tone and smartly
employed, liberal vibrato, and Schmid’s delicate and lyrical note
enough to give either newcomer a slight edge.

Reger’s Piano Concerto is much more difficult than it sounds,
which gives it a very ungrateful difficulty-to-bravura ratio: many finger-twisting
hours of practice but little by way of applause-inducing razzle-dazzle
piano-fireworks: no cadenzas, for starters. If there’s to be any
revival of this work, it has yet to happen. Rudolf Serkin (Ormandy,
CBS/Sony), close to Reger through his father-in-law Adolf Busch, used
to be the only game in town. The few recordings since haven’t
added greatly - Michael Korstick (Ulf Schirmer, Munich RO, CPO), Gerhard
Oppitz (Horst Stein, Bamberg Symphony, Koch), and Love Derwinger (Leif
Segerstam, Norrköping SO, BIS). The two German recordings are a
little Reger-stereotype-reinforcing foursquare; the latter less than
the former … Derwinger/Segerstam are supple and surprisingly sensuous
but I wish the recorded sound was clearer; it’s too far the opposite
of the harsh and direct aged sound of the Serkin recording. The most
recent addition, Marc-André Hamelin (Ilan Volkov, Berlin RSO),
makes the most of the work, with shades, fleet nuance and even relative
lightness.

Relative lightness is not organist and harpsichordist-cum-pianist Amadeus
Webersinke’s strength, but Bach is. He gets those aspects of the
concerto very right that link up with the great master and Reger’s
most notable composer-role model. Being a symphonic work, an anti-piano-concerto
of sorts - perhaps the way Brahms’ Violin Concerto was considered
to have been written against the violin - the orchestra has more
to do than in the violin concerto. Günther Herbig and the Dresden
Philharmonic make very fine work of it. If it’s not very attractive
a concerto on casual first hearing - there’s kinship to Busoni’s
concerto, with a hint of Pfitzner - it yields more and more with each
return. If you happen to fall in love with it you can always add Hamelin/Volkov
for a considerably different, alternative take.

So much for the orchestral music, which is well, though not exhaustively*,
covered by this box. Absent are *Not included are the two symphonic
movements in D-minor, the Lyrical Andante for string orchestra, the
Two Romances for Violin and small Orchestra op.50, the Fatherland Overture,
the Overture to a Comedy op.120, the Schubert transcription “An
den Mond”, the G-major Serenade op.95 and the fragment of the
Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra op.147. However, the collection also
says “Sacred Songs, Chamber Music”, which insinuates more
than there is to it. It should really read: “And then assorted
bits and pieces”. The chamber music included exhausts itself first
in one of the String Trios: A minor, op.77b, 1904, the all-strings sibling
of the Serenade op.77a for flute, violin, and viola. Then there’s
the veritable masterpiece that is the Clarinet Quintet op.146 (1915).
Both works are performed by the Valerius Ensemble: 1997 recordings by
Brilliant, formerly coupled with Hindemith. On paper they look like
potential weak spots, but they’re performed very well indeed.
André Kerver plays the clarinet with panache that makes you not
miss the Quintet’s primary exponent, Karl Leister. The latter
is best heard in his first recording with the Drolc Quartet, which comes
with the string quartets on a DG
Trio. The Quintet might be an ideal, if slightly misleading starting
point for any Reger exploration … there’s no sense of overly
dense Brahms or hyper-chromatic Bach here, but instead a gay air of
Mozart that hardly sounds autumnal or like the swansong that, biographically
speaking, this piece was.

Two further CDs are filled with the seven Chorale Fantasies (opp. 27,
30, 40 and 52, 1990 Dutch Fidelio recordings, previously re-issued on
Brilliant), and finally the Three Motets op.110 (1912) and Eight Sacred
Songs op.138 for small chorus (taken from another 1970s Edel recording).
The op.52 Chorale Fantasies are reasonably common among organists’
repertoire; the others less so, and rarely found combined on two discs.
Organ/Reger lovers might have their favourite instruments and interpreters
for “Wachet auf, ruft uns
die Stimme”… for everyone else this is likely new territory.
I can’t claim to have strong feelings towards these recordings
one way or the other, nor do I have many comparisons at hand. Where
I do, I prefer Martin Welzel on Naxos because his instrument provides
more individual colours - subdued though they are - than either of Wouter
van den Broek’s organs, and his playing greater gravity and spatial
separation. The Sacred songs and Motets show similarities to Zemlinsky,
more so than Bruckner - as one might be tempted to expect - and are
a moving way to cap this ultimately very charming Reger survey.

For those who
got a taste for more, the next Reger-stops should include the Piano
Trios, the Six Pieces op.94, his Goldberg Variations touch-up (together
with Rheinberger) and some of the choral works, specifically as assembled
on the recent Ondine release “Vivit!”.